Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Why write a blog?

Edublogs uses questions to prompt people to blog. The first question posted today, 01/04/17, is why do you blog? Here are a few of my reasons:

1. It helps me clarify my thinking about a particular topic or idea. This clarifying process some might call "metacogntion." Metacognition has to do simply with the question, "What do you think about what you think?" or as the bumper states in the negative, "Don't believe everything you think." There are some follow-up questions to the first one which are: "How do you know if what you think is true?", and "How would you feel if what you thought were true turns out to be false?", and "How would you manage those feelings?"

2. Another reason I blog is it allows me to articulate and distribute ideas that are unconventional in such a way as to be unacceptable because of the cognitive dissonance they create in established media publications. Some of my ideas may seen heretical or blasphemous of accepted orthodoxy and editorial decisions get made to silence them as "inappropriate" for the editor's publication. New ideas are often perceived as threatening to the status quo and so are excluded from ever seeing the light of day. Blogging allows ideas to be shared without the fear of censorship.

3. Blogging allows the author to develop and share ideas with other kindred souls and it is in this sharing that a resonance can occur which can be very validating and satisfying. Validation is not the same thing as agreement. Validation involves the experience that one's thoughts, feelings, and behavior are recognized, acknowledged, and understood even if the reader (listener) does not agree. A relationship is formed that can be dialogical from which the participants can learn if engaged in with open minds and compassionate hearts.

People who write blogs, if they are to be successful and beneficial, must engage in blogging as a regular practice and be faithful. Whether the blog is successful or not depends, of course, on the definition of success which can be thought of as threefold: does it achieve the intended results, is it efficient and able to be produced within the parameters of available resources, and lastly, is it satisfying to its multiple stakeholders?

The intended purpose of this blog is to help people live more happy and satisfying lives. Please let me know how reading this blog affects you, if at all.